Congress struggles to extend unemployment compensation for workers ruined by the Republican economy, but at the top there’s no lack of money for unemployed CEOs. You don’t even need to be furloughed because your company lays you off. You can be “let go” for total incompetence (or just being perceived as an insufferable prick), but you’ll have plenty of moolah to tie you over until your next gig destroying a major corporation.
In the case of Tony Hayward (saddled with not just his own incompetence, but that of staffers down to the operational level), the cost of being out of a job for the foreseeable future is eased by about $16 million in his exit package.
For comparison, consider that an unemployed worker in a top-paying state like Massachusetts stands to get a total of perhaps $62,000 before being dropped from the rolls after 99 weeks. Meanwhile, as I previously pointed out in Funemployment for CEOs, get-away packages for the already rich executives often total in the tens of millions of dollars. Former CEO Anne Mulcahy recently left Xerox with a severance package worth an estimated $31.4 million, and top earners (of largesse) have gotten as much as $400 million for their retirement.
What kind of fun could you have between jobs if you had a few million to spend?
Congress needs to extend benefits beyond 99 weeks. There should not be a limit set until the economy reaches full employment again.
And, what is full employment? Traditionally, economists have set a 4% unemployment rate as “full employment” on the premise that there are always people between jobs. But, that was before the Internet and online job searches. Considering the efficiencies of today’s economy, full employment should mean a 1 or 2% unemployment rate. Otherwise, we’ve got a Monster on our hands.